Japanese Merchant Convoy Composition

[Mynok]

Yes, they can.

[Historiker]

[X(]

Did this start with AE?

[Mynok]

Nope.

[Historiker]

Well, I wonder why this never happend in my games...

[Mynok]

Did you try it? Just hit refuel at sea. I'm not saying it was automatic necessarily, but it was very doable.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Did you try it? Just hit refuel at sea. I'm not saying it was automatic necessarily, but it was very doable.

Actually even that isn't necessary. If you just ignore them they will refuel on their own

What is different in AE is that they do not do it every turn like they did in stock; much more efficient now

[Mynok]

I never noticed them doing it automatically in Witp, but I also made sure to check every turn and refuel when needed, so perhaps I just pre-empted the auto-refuel. [:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Historiker

Well, I wonder why this never happend in my games...

Don't know, but I've always been allowed to let ships siphon fuel off each others tanks. This happens with both warships and merchants. The problem with it is that they have to come to a dead stop, so it slows the task force down.

[Historiker]

I just realized this happens with BBs and CVs but never with other ships. Thus I thought Mynok was kidding! [X(]

[Graymane]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli


[snip]I allocate a set amount of supply to operations, with a reserve that I don't touch unless absolutely necessary. I also track about 20 or so stats daily. I want to catch trends before they become critical. [snip]

What stats do you track and how?

[vonSchnitter]

Well, very interesting.

Since it appears, some of the reallocation issues in the home islands - like the Shimonoseki black hole - have been adressed by the last patch - even though the readme does no say so - an attempt to asses the situation plus play testing is called for.

Assumptions based on "Staff"

a) Honshu is 110k resource points short per day
b) Kyushu has a surplus of 21k resources
c) Shikoku has a surplus of 10k resources
d) Hokkaido has a surplus of 35k resources

Assumptions based on ground network graphics "R" or "Y" key:
There are no road or rail connections between Honshu and the other Home islands except for Shikoku, which is connected by roads

Wich leeds to Assumptions based on the rule book:

9.3.3.3 AUTOMATIC TRANSFER OF BULK CARGO BETWEEN ADJACENT PORTS

And this rule says: 500 resource points per port size of the smaller port in the connection can be transferred per day.

If no other factors play a role this translates into:
Kyushu-Honshu (Fukuoka (10) - Shimoneseki (9) = 9*500=4500 = deficit of 15k resources
Shikoku-Honshu (Takamatsu (4) - Kobe (10) and Matsujama (3) - Hiroshima (9) plus rail = 7*500 = 3500 = deficit of 7500
Hokkaido-Honshu (Hakodate (6) - Ominato (5) = 5*500 )=2500 = deficit of 32k

Other rule book issues:

Since I could not find any references to resource etc. flow restrictions based on ground connections, spolage etc, even though play testing indicates otherwise, I will go ahead with this and see where I get.

However, a few conclusions can be drawn:
a) Solving the transport issue in the home islands will cover 75% of the resource issue
b) Any expansion of LI or HI will take place outside of Honshu
c) Optimizing some of the ports mentioned should be beneficial long term.
d) Sending most of the Home island surplus stock to Honshu asap - using any bottom deemed available - look promising.

I understand, the model is simplistic - and I have at least a dozen ideas for "complications" - but once the pcinciple starts to work - which it did not pre-patch - lets start from here.

Cheers

[guctony]

As a Rokie player I explored most of the other areas of the game.
Now come the The nemesis The Supply and resource management.

Well Before go in to details. I like to define a concept.

I think japan can try to simulate big sized convoy logic it. Which can be beneficial for Sub defence. Imagine small ships channeling resources to local central HUBs. And from the HUBs large Convoys reloading and transfering stuff to Mainland. It will require double loading and selected Ports had to be enlarged in both ends. It would take a while to arrange such a system to work but once started working it will work well I guess. One large well protected Convoy should be better then many small ones. As Atlantic war has teached.

Do you think such a system is manage-able.

Regard

[morphin]

For oil and fuel

Singapore will be very important as a hub for quite all of the SRA (Brunei, Miri,Palembang, Singkep, Bengakalis, Medan). So it is important to get singapore asap.
The other one is Soerbaja for the rest( Balikapapan, Boela, Babo and Tarrkan). And if all these are not more than 25% damaged, you need every ship available to get a part of the fuel back to japan (not to mention oil)

So as japan you need not more oil or fuel, you need desperately more TK!!!! Maybe the most valuable ship is a TK and not a CV[:D]

[Historiker]

Toyohara has a daily surplus of 9.800 resources. Its port can only handle 11.250 per day. So either you have nearly permanently a convoy docked and loading - which means at least two, rather three to four convois only for Toyohara, you MUST enlarge the port!

[vaned74]

Toyohara (on Sakhalin) is connected by high volume rail to Shikuka to the north. Port cap at Toyohara is 24,000 tons (max ship size of 12,000 tons). A good chunk of resources will head north to Shikuka - it looks like the port tries to keep a good 30-50,000 resources there so if you load resources at Shikuka the system will pull resources to there.

I have been pulling off Sakhalin for sometime now (3 months in this game and 3 months in the prior game) by this method using small ships with a few PBs as escorts.

A word of caution - I always consider this northern front to be an area to watch as Japan. Now with the patch in place, minefields are going into place at both ports and I finally finished training a handful of ASW skilled air groups that will be positioned here. I have also been building up the Kurile islands since the beginning of the game to position ASW and patrol assets as well as a couple of strike capable airfields with support. This is the one area of the map that if the Allies hit early, you have no strategic time to react so I always pay attention to it early. Plus, its also a very close run from ports in Alaska for Allied submarines, and generally one of the areas that the S-boats with their lower endurance can operate.

[Historiker]

Toyohara (on Sakhalin) is connected by high volume rail to Shikuka to the north.

Edit: misunderstood you...

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: Historiker

Toyohara has a daily surplus of 9.800 resources. Its port can only handle 11.250 per day. So either you have nearly permanently a convoy docked and loading - which means at least two, rather three to four convois only for Toyohara, you MUST enlarge the port!

The 11,250 is what it gets just for the level 3 port. It also gets a daily port bonus equal to the excess resource capacity. (equally important, you get a sizeable bonus to the per-ship load rate).

The limiting factor in Toyohara is the docking capacity, not the daily load. So you probably will want to expand it (I am) for the docking increase.

As vaned74 points out, you can load some of the resources at Shikuka. You'll want to send an occasional convoy there for the oil anyway.

[vaned74]

I run about 8 Ehime class AKs to Shikuka every week and two smaller convoys rotating in and out of Toyohara back to Honshu (each one about 10 AKL or Gozan AKs - each about 20,000 tons of capacity). Seems that my buildup since game start (after 90 days) on Sakhalin is only about 25,000 resources above what started there on Dec 7th. System seems to work well.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Graymane

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli


[snip]I allocate a set amount of supply to operations, with a reserve that I don't touch unless absolutely necessary. I also track about 20 or so stats daily. I want to catch trends before they become critical. [snip]

What stats do you track and how?

I go to the industry screen from the intel screen. I copy down pretty much all of that data in a spreadsheet. That gives me daily trends. I can graph it when I want to in order to see longer trends, although graphing it is really not necessary. As long as the numbers are going up, life is good.

Once a month, I check track (in a different spreadsheet) the resource/oil/fuel by region to see how that looks. I then calculate what minimums I want to move to each region for each commodity that region needs. I then track on by hand how much goes to each region. It's really not as difficult as it sounds. [:D]

[vonSchnitter]

A little testing, to get a feel, what other factors apart from the "math" may influence resource flow in the Home Islands.

Setup: Scen 1, non historic start, using what ships are availabele for Hokaido. Running the "test" for three days. All TFs from Hockaido wil return to Ominato, set to not unload.

As can be seen, between day 1 and day 2 about 200k resource points vanish from Hokkaido (probably Saporro).
That could just be another day one freak.

More interesting is the loading behaviour:

The larger port at Hakkodate loads less than Saporro - (less ships in the Saporro TF - but larger) . even though both are docked. No OP points used for refuelling.
Does ship size - or anything other ship related - matter ?

As far as the non-docked TFs go, the loading speed is remarkebly variable:

On day 1 the Kushiro TF gets about the full share of the ports capacity - if docked. While the Muroran TF is much closer to expectation. Could that be another freak ?

The Wakkanai TF is just another case: The port is low on resources for loading. The interesting part is: The loading TF does not really "pull" resources from other areas.

Now for the balance of things (using day 2 to 3)

At the end of day 3, Hokkaido has 321844 resources left ashore, which is an increase of 15135 points.
According to Staff, Hockaido has a surplus of roughly 35000 points per day.
Since about 10000 points got transferred to ships about 10k points are not accounted for yet.
Ominato - as the transfer port from and to Hokaido - is a size 5 Port - which means 5*500 points capacity - which in turn leaves about 7500 points unaccounted.

If my math is right - just hope so - about 20% of the resource production as predicted by Staff is not there.

Anyone with a clue ?